' / 


LEGISLATIVE AND JUDICIAL APPROPRIATIONS. 




SPEECH 


HON. STEPHEN W. KELLOGG 


OIT CONNECTICUT, 


HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 


March 11 and 14,1874 




— 


WASHINGTON: 

government printing office. 
1874 . 














SPEECH 


OF 


HON. STEPHEN W. KELLOGG 


Wednesday, March 11, 1874. 

The House Lei 112 ; in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, and hav¬ 
ing under consideration the bill (H. It. No. 20(54) making appropriations for the legis¬ 
lative, executive, and judicial expenses of the Government for the year ending June 
30, 1875, and for other purposes— 

Mr. KELLOGG said: 

Mr. Chairman: I should not have sought the floor on this occasion 
had it not been that, under the order of the House, I have been for a 
few weeks past investigating to some extent a large portion of the 
subjects embraced in this legislative appropriation bill. Under that 
order of the House I have undertaken, as one of a sub-committee of 
the Committee on Civil Service Reform, to do what the distinguished 
gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Dawes] said, in his able speech 
a short time since, ought to have been done years ago, and which had 
not been attempted by him or by any other member of the House 
during nearly twenty years of his service here. 

I do not know whose fault it was that we have been going on year 
after year, as gentlemen have told us, with two thousand or more 
employes in the Treasury Department without law, or rather without 
any authority of law, except what is found in the successive annual 
appropriation bills. It certainly was not the fault of the one hundred 
and eighty new members of the House. It certainly was not the fault 
of those of us who have been here for one or two Congresses past, but 
who have never until this session been upon any committee that 
brought them in contact with the Treasury Department. 

This session, under the order of the House, the Committee on Civil 
Service Reform, if they do not accomplish anything else, have under¬ 
taken in good faith to investigate the different Departments, and to 
hud out what is necessary by law for each Department. And the sub¬ 
committees will in due time report bills for such Departments as, in 
our judgment, need reorganizing. We are endeavoring to do this 
thoroughly, having due regard to all the requirements of an effective 
and sufficient working force in the Departments on the one hand, and 
a judicious and thorough economy in the administration of the Depart¬ 
ments on the other. If our work, when done, is as good as our inten¬ 
tions and efforts are to do the work well, we trust we shall have the 
cordial support of the House in carrying it into effect as a law. 

Now, in regard to the bill before the House, I have read it with care, 
for it embraces nearly all the appropriations in regard to the Treasury 
Department. I have also read Report No. 139 that accompanies the 
bill, being mainly the testimony taken by the Committee on Appro¬ 
priations; I have read that report with a great deal of interest and 
care. I will say this for that committee: able as its members are, and 



4 


well as they do their work, in my judgment it will he utterly impos¬ 
sible for them to carry out the rule which my colleague, who has just 
taken his seat, [Mr. Starkweather,] has announced they have 
adopted, of cutting down one-fourth or one-eighth the force of every 
Bureau in the Department without regard to its necessities; putting 
them all upon a Procrustean bed, and cutting the legs of each just 
short enough to fit it, whether they can bear it or not. 1 think that 
gentlemen will find, in the course of the discussion upon the details 
of this bill, that reductions have been made in some places in the 
Treasury Department beyond what the interests of the civil service 
will justify. 

I do not look upon it as good civil service to impair the efficiency 
of any one of your Bureaus or Departments, or to fix the salaries of 
those in charge of them so low that you cannot get men who will dis¬ 
charge their duties with competency, efficiency, fidelity, and honesty. 
It is not good civil service reform and economy to cut down any De¬ 
partment or any Bureau so much that the work cannot be done 
promptly and well, or to pay the officers so small a salary that you 
cannot get proper and suitable men to fill the places. But it is good 
civil-service reform, if we can find any useless offices, to abolish them. 
Wherever we can find an unnecessary or a useless office, we should 
strike it off. But we should pay those whom we are obliged to employ 
so that they can discharge their duties honestly and faithfully, and 
not feel that they must do something else to keep the wolf from their 
doors. 

The Civil Service Reform Committee have been investigating the 
Departments for this purpose. We have agreed to report a bill to 
abolish those useless appraisers that the gentleman from Massa¬ 
chusetts [Mr. Dawes] spoke of in his excellent speech awhile ago, 
although he was chairman of the committee that had that branch of 
service under its charge all the last Congress. Nor was it his speech 
that led us into that investigation, as our reply made in January 
from the Treasury Department, in answer to inquiries from our com¬ 
mittee, and made two weeks before the speech of the gentleman from 
Massachusetts, will show. % 

I find, in looking over this bill, that there has been a very hand¬ 
some reduction from the amount of appropriations last year and the 
estimates for this year. There ought to be a reduction. The bill 
which I have nearly prepared for reorganizing the Treasury Depart¬ 
ment reduces the appropriations of last year some $300,000 or more, 
and dispenses with some three hundred and odd clerks and employ6s. 
But it does not make a general cutting down of one-eighth, in every 
Bureau and division, without regard to its necessities. 

Mr. NIBLACK. I wish to ask the gentleman whether, after the 
examination he has given this subject, he is not fully convinced that 
no intelligent reduction can be made in any Bureau or Department, 
without the active co-operation of the head of that Bureau or De¬ 
partment ? 

Mr. KELLOGG. Certainly; 1 agree with the gentleman there. 
But I have found the Treasury Department entirely willing to make 
all possible reductions consistent with the efficiency of the service. 

Mr. NIBLACK. I concur with the gentleman entirely that indis¬ 
criminate cutting down by a committee of this House is not necessarily 
a measure of reform. 

Mr. KELLOGG. It will not bear the test of the practical working of 
the Department to cut down its force in every Bureau in the same pro¬ 
portion. 


I think the gentlemen of the committee will in some places correct 
heir own bill. 

I fin cl here that the appropriations by this bill for the Treasury De¬ 
partment proper were last year $2,351,880. This year the Department 
asked in the estimates $2,384,260—an addition of a little more than 
$30,000. But the committee have cut down this item to $2,028,720. 
This is not all. 

The expenses of the national loan are for the first time taken out 
of the permanent appropriations and placed in the form of specific 
appropriations in the general appropriation *bill. The expenses of 
the national loan are one of the permanent appropriations hereto¬ 
fore spoken of, and of which the gentleman from Massachusetts 
{Mr. Dawes] complained in his speech a short time since. But this 
branch of expenditures was made a permanent appropriation, I be¬ 
lieve, in the Forty-first Congress, when the gentleman himself was 
chairman of the Committee on Appropriations. The expenses of the 
national loan last year were $2,806,000. The permanent appropria¬ 
tion amounted to something like $5,000,000, if I remember rightly; 
but only the amount I have named was used. This year the Depart¬ 
ment itself proposed a reduction of almost $600,000, their estimate 
being $2,236,589; but the committee propose to cut down the appro¬ 
priation still lower, down to $2,151,413.50.. 

Right here I will say that these gentlemen of the committee, able 
as they are, have doubtless done all that men could be expected to do 
when charged with the preparation of so many appropriation bills. 
It is impossible for them, with all their labors, to go through every 
Bureau and division in the Departments and see for themselves which 
can bear reduction, and which require, for the prompt and faithful 
execution of their work, all its present force. This labor the sub¬ 
committee on Civil Service Reform, of which I happen to be chair¬ 
man, are trying to do, though our labor is by no means completed. 

The Committee on Appropriations, in bringing this permanent ap¬ 
propriation into the body of the general appropriation bill, have 
included what has been known as the loan division in the office of 
the Secretary of the Treasury—a division through which, in the course 
of one year, $1,250,000,000 in Government bonds have gone to be 
examined, verified, canceled, or exchanged for other bonds; a divis¬ 
ion through which $750,000,000 in bonds passed during the last year. 

[Here the hammer fell.] 

The CHAIRMAN. One hour of the time allowed for general debate 
has expired. 

Mr. GARFIELD obtained the floor. 

Mr. KELLOGG. I hope the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Garfield] 
will yield me the fifteen minutes left. 

Mr. GARFIELD. O, I cannot do that. 

Mr. KELLOGG. Well, ten. 

Mr. GARFIELD. I yield to the gentleman ten minutes. 

Mr. KELLOGG. It is useless for me to undertake to discuss this 
subject in less than half an hour. I know that after the eleven mem¬ 
bers of the Committee on Appropriations have gone through with 
the discussion of a bill, it is almost useless for any one outside the 
committee to undertake to speak upon the subject. Aft&r the stream 
of debate has ran through four or five leading men on our side, and 
two or three leading men on the other side, it becomes insipid, if not 
41 stale, flat, and unprofitable.” But I will do the best I can to say what 
I intended to say in the little time left me to-day. 

The loan division, through which these millions of dollars in amount 


of bonds pass annually, the division to which every registered or cou¬ 
pon bond sold or exchanged by one of your constituents with another 
must be sent, is one of the most important in the Department. In such 
a division as that you must have ability, fidelity, and honesty. To that 
division $10,000,000 worth of coupons, cut from Government bonds, 
have come from the other side of the Atlantic in one batch within 
two weeks past. Yet the Committee on Appropriations propose to 
put this division in charge of an eighteen hundred dollar clerk. They 
have made no other provision for it. They do not even make a divis¬ 
ion of it. I say, sir, that such responsibilities ought not to be put 
upon any eighteen hundred dollar clerk in the land. It is not a fair 
compensation for such responsibility; it is not right. It is not good 
economy, nor is it good civil-service reform. I know the men in 
charge of that division. They are competent, faithful, honest men, 
who cannot stay there for any such salary as that. 

So, too, of the bureau known as the Burea u of Engraving and Printing. 
I think the Committee on Appropriations propose to cut down this Bu¬ 
reau more than it will bear. I never was in that B ureau until during the 
present session. I have recently been through it carefully with the 
sub-committee of which I am a member, and I believe there was not 
one of us who was not perfectly satisfied that it was the hardest- 
worked and poorest-paid Bureau in all the Departments of the Gov¬ 
ernment, the employds getting but little more than enough to pay 
their board, as prices are at the cheapest boarding-houses in Wash¬ 
ington, with scarcely enough left to keep themselves decently clothed 
from one end of the year to the other. Gentlemen will remember that 
he backs of the bonds and notes have been, and are now, partly 
printed in New York; then they are sent here, where the faces are 
printed in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing; then they pass 
through another process in the Bureau for the printing of the num¬ 
bers; and then by still another process the seals are printed upon 
them in the Bureau. In addition to the currency and bonds of the 
United States Government, millions of dollars’ worth of stamps are 
printed in that Bureau. All the sheets of currency and bonds have 
also to be separated, and prepared for use. For the labor in all this 
vast Bureau, embracing twelve or fifteen hundred employes, this bill 
proposes to appropriate the sum of $500,000 only. For printing the 
backs of the notes and bonds an appropriation of $625,000 is proposed 
in the bill, and $150,000 for transportation. 

I have no time to allude to other branches of this subject; but I 
presume the gentlemen of the committee themselves will be willing 
to make corrections in some points when they come to the details of 
the bill. 1 have statements from many of the Bureaus and divisions 
of the Treasury Department as to the actual wants there; and expect 
to have like statements from the others, and examine them all care¬ 
fully before the bill for reorganizing the Treasury Department comes 
up for action. 

And now I have a few words to say to my friends on the other 
side of the House. In the speeches that have been made by them 
they seem to have followed the cne that has been taken up here, 
and attempted to prove that, within the last two years especially, 
there has been an immense increase in the number of Government 
employes, and a wonderful growth of extravagance in the admin¬ 
istration of the Government. 

The gentleman from New York, [Mr. Wood,] in his speech on Satur¬ 
day last, took the Blue Book, and from it, as he claimed, gave us the 
tables showing the wonderful increase in the number of employes since 


7 


1859, and in the last two years. Looking at the tables, I find that in 
1859, during Mr. Buchanan’s administration, the number of employes 
in the civil service of the Government was 44,527, if he has given them 
correctly. Turning to 1871, twelve years later, I find that the whole 
numberpf civil employes of the Government amounted at that time to 
only 57,605, according to his tables—an increase of only a little more 
than one-fifth. In view of all the vast interests that have sprung up 
in recent years, all the interests growing out of the war, I say that no 
nation on the face of the earth can show a greater economy in the in¬ 
crease of its civil employes under similar circumstances. To talk about 
its being practicable that the expenses of the Government should be 
no more to-day than they were in the days of James Buchanan, or 
at any period before the war, is absurd. You might as well compare 
the expenses of a couple when newly married with their expenses fif¬ 
teen or twenty years later, when they have a family of six or eight 
children around them. [Laughter.] There is just as much differ¬ 
ence in the position to which the country has grown ' especially when | 
we look at all the pensions, and all the work on bonds and currency, 
and other expenses that have grown up in consequence of the late war. 

A few words more about my neighbor’s Blue-Book tables, which he 
read with so much gusto. He says that in the Blue Book there were 
eiglity-six thousand and odd names in 1873. How (loes lie make it out ? 

1 turn to the Blue Book, and I find that in the War Department 
he has given us the number of sixteen hundred and sixty-six; and 
although he designated it as the civil-service list—and that is the 
way it was spoken and the way it now reads in the Record— yet 
there are less than one thousand on the civil list of the War Depart¬ 
ment. How his figures were made, and who made them, I do not 
know. He must have included some of the officers of the Army, and 
perhaps he included even the cadets at West Point. 

And so it was in reference to the Navy Department. He states 
there are eiglity-two hundred and forty-one in the civil service of the 
Navy Department. I confess those figures somewhat startled me. 

He says he got them, or they were got, from the Blue Book. A glance 
at the book will show there is no such number there as the gentleman 
has indicated. 

And I find another interesting fact, in a hurried examination of the 
book. Turn to this Blue Book, aiyl take it as the gentleman brought 
it in here. Out of the one thousand and twenty-two pages of that 
Blue Book, six hundred and sixty-eight pages are taken up with 
the Post-Office Department alone, and only three hundred and fifty- 
four pages are given to all the other Departments of the Government. 
How have the officers in the Post-Office Department increased ? 
Hundreds of pages are given to small postmasters, to route-agents, 
letter-carriers, postal clerks, &c. The number has increased from 
year to year until they have grown up to such an extent as to cover 
these hundreds of pages of this Blue Book. Gentlemen here know 
how this has happened. It is because of the increase of mail facili¬ 
ties ; because of cheap postage and daily mails all over the country. 
Without the present mail facilities you could not get your mails 
through New York City. If you would cut down the system from 
what it is, it would be impossible to get your mails through New 
York City for a single day. We have traveling post-offices on every 
great line of railroad. Everybody here knows you could not do it, 
if you should return to the old system. The chief increase during 
the last four years, as the statement of the gentleman from New York 
has shown, has been in the Post-Office Department. 


8 


Mr. PACKER. If the gentleman from Connecticut will allow me 
I would like, in this connection, to make a further correction of the 
figures taken by the gentleman from New York [Mr. Wood] from the 
111ue Book. 

Mr. KELLOGG. I will yield to the chairman of the Committee on 
the Post-Office and Post-Roads. 

Mr. PACKER. The gentleman from New York, [Mr. Wood,] in his 
speech on Saturday last, stated the “number of the employes of the 
Post-Office Department as 495 at Washington and 59,7.50 elsewhere, 
making a total of 60,225.” 

The truth is there were, at the commencement of this fiscal year, in 
the Post-Office Department in this city, but 354 employes, including 
all the clerks, laborers, and watchmen, &c.; and all the other officers 
and agents throughout the entire country, including postmasters, 
contractors, clerks in post-offices, letter-carriers,route-agents, railway- 
post-office clerks, mail-route messengers, local agents, and special 
agents, were but 46,656; making a total of 47,010, instead of 60,225 
as stated by the gentleman from New York. The Blue Book gives 
the names of all persons employed, even for a fractional part of the 
year, and consequently includes the names of incumbents who may 
have died or resigned, as well as of those appointed to succeed them, 
and hence the gross*inaccuracy of the gentleman’s statement. 

Mr. KELLOGG. That makes a difference of thirteen thousand and 
odd in the figures which were given the other day by the gentleman 
from New York, [Mr. Wood.] I thank the gentleman from Pennsyl¬ 
vania heartily for his information. He is more familiar, from his posi¬ 
tion, with the Post-Office Department than I am. I could not see, 
unless the mail service had increased faster than I supposed, how it 
was possible that it could have run up from forty-three thousand to 
sixty thousand or more in two years. 

I have something more in detail to say in regard to the tables. The 
gentleman from Massachusetts, too, gave us some tables—some seven or 
eight pages of them. I have some tables here, too, but I will not print 
them in my speech, with the exception of one or two of them. After 
we have had four or five speeches from leading gentlemen on the 
committee on each side of the House, in which are spread out at large 
tables of figures from our financial reports, it seems to me that we 
have as many figures as we ought to have in the Congressional 
Record. My head feels like an ant-heap of figures when I get through 
reading one of them. But the fact stands out as admitted by the 
gentlemen themselves in their speeches, that for the last two years 
of the administration of Andrew Johnson the average expenditures 
amounted to about $350,000,000 annually in round numbers ; and that 
the increase ran up to $370,000,000 in 1868, and that then the expen¬ 
ditures run down to $290,000,000 while at the same time we paid off 
$400,000,000 in that period of the public debt. 

[Here Mr. Kellogg yielded the floor for a motion that the com¬ 
mittee rise ; when the death of Senator Sumner was announced.] 

Saturday, March 14, 1874. 

The House, as in Committee of the Whole, having under consideration the bill 
(H. It. No. 1385) to regulate commerce by railroads in the several States— 

Mr. KELLOGG. I ask unanimous consent for half an hour to com¬ 
plete a speech which I commenced on Wednesday last—not on this 
subject. 

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The House hears the request made by 
the gentleman from Connecticut, [Mr. Kellogg. ] Is there objection ? 


% 


9 


Mr. EDEN. I understood that this day was set apart for the con 
si deration of the particular question of transportation. 

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair so understands, and if ob¬ 
jection is made the request of the gentleman from Connecticut cannot 
be entertained. 

Mr. KELLOGG. I am aware that it is only by the unanimous 
courtesy of the House that I can obtain the floor for the purpose I 
have indicated. 

Mr. EDEN. I do not object to the gentleman’s proceeding. 

The SPEAKER pro tempore. If there be no objection, the gentle¬ 
man from Connecticut will be allowed to speak ou the subject he has 
indicated for half an hour. 

There was no objection. 

PUBLIC EXPE VDITUXtES. 

' Mr. KELLOGG. Mr. Speaker, I thank the House heartily for this 
courtesy. 

When I yielded the floor the other day, for the announcement of 
that sad event which shocked and startled all at this Capitol, and 
cast a shadow of gloom over all the land, I was proceeding to make 
some further remarks on the speech delivered on Saturday last, con¬ 
taining a vast amount of statistics, by the gentleman from New York, 
[Mr. Wood,] who I am sorry is not now in his seat. But if I make 
any misstatements, I shall be very happy to meet him at any time on 
this floor, and to make ample corrections if such be necessary. 

I have a'few words more to say in regard to the Blue Book, from 
which the gentleman, as he said, drew his tables in regard to the Post- 
Office Department. I have given this matter a careful examination, 
and find that, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Packer] 
kindly informed me while speaking, the gentleman has included in 
his list, as he gave it here, all the clerks in every post-office through 
the whole country, railway postal clerks—a class of officers unknown 
in 1859, with which he made the comparison—route-agents, mail- 
messengers, all the letter-carriers in every city in the land where the 
letter-carrier system has been established, some 400 of them in New 
York City alone, besides those in Brooklyn. If the gentleman when 
here seeks to bring in a bill to abolish this letter-carrier system in 
the large cities, especially in New York, I presume many of us will 
vote with him. But I submit it will give a wrong impression to the 
country, as the gentleman’s speech was evidently calculated to give a 
wrong impression to the country, to compare this increase in the num¬ 
ber of employes with the number of employes in 1859, before either 
of the systems of railway postal service or letter-carrier service was 
established. There are certainly none of either class in the Blue Book 
of 1859. 

Then there are one hundred pages of the Blue Book given to mail- 
contractors. All the mail-contractors in the whole country are in¬ 
cluded in the gentleman’s speech as civil officers. And, reckoning them 
60 to a page, for often a name is repeated of a party having more than 
one contract, and there are not as many names upon a page as in case 
of postmasters or mail-agents, there are some 6,000 of those. Then 
there are at least 6,000 special-mail-service men; and those he includes 
in his speech in order to swell the list to the amount, as he claims, that 
it has been swelled to in the year 1873. I will read a* few names from 
my own State as they stand at the head of the list: H. E. Allen, $4 
compensation during the year ending Juno 30,1873; J. Anderson, $2; 
G. L. Baker, $8.25; H. Ambler, $50; E. II. Bronson, $73; W. C. Beecher 


« 


10 


$30; J. S. Bunnell, $19; W. H. Binn, $2; and so on. And the highest 
hut one in the whole list in my State received an amount of $300. 
That is an illustration of the manlier in which the gentleman has 
swelled the list of the civil employes of the Government in the Post- 
Office Department. Every man or hoy who is employed to pick up a 
mail-hag thrown off at a railroad depot, or from a stage at the door 
of a country tavern, and carry it across the street to the post-office, 
for which he receives five, ten, or twenty dollars a year, is put down 
as an employ^ in the civil service of tiie Government. How mon¬ 
strously extravagant our civil service has become! 

But the gentleman’s figures were all wrong. He gave the increase, 
as was stated the other day, as being from 43,351 in 1871 to 60,225 in 
1873. Now, Mr. Speaker, deducting these mail-contractors and the 
special-mail-service men, who cannot in any reasonable or fair sense 
of the term he called civil employes of the Government, there are just 
five hundred and twenty-eight pages left of the Blue Book taken up by 
the Post-Office Department; and if you reckon 80 names to the page, 
which is more than the average, there are not over 42,240 persons in 
the civil service of the Post-Office Department, including all the post¬ 
masters, all the post-office clerics in every post-office, railroad postal 
clerks, who did not exist in 1859, route-agents, letter-carriers, and all; 
and the number, as given by the gentleman’s own table, of post-office 
employes in the service of the Government in 1859, when neither 
the letter-carriers nor these railway postal clerks existed, was, in 
Buchanan’s administration, 38,234. The contractors and special-mail- 
service men were included then, as they are now; but their number 
was much smaller in 1859 than now. And the fact mentioned the 
other day by the chairman of the Committee on the Post-Office and 
Post-Roads, [Mr. Packer,] who lias the official figures all before his 
committee, shows that the gentleman from New York has got his 
figures 13,000 or more too high in any view of the subject. 

So in regard to the Interior Department. The gentleman’s table 
gives the number in the Interior in 1873 as 3,581. I have examined 
the Blue Book carefully. There are forty-eight pages in the Blue Book 
covered by the names of employes in the Interior Department. They 
are not printed as thickly as those in the Post-Office Department, and 
on comparison I find there cannot be over 70 names on the page. 
That would give 3,480, so near his figures that it is a little surpris¬ 
ing to find it so. But sixteen pages of this portion of the Blue Book, or 
just one-third of it, are taken up with Indian agencies under the old 
treaties, all or nearly every one made before this Administration came 
into power. And in that list, forming one-third of what the gentle¬ 
man calls the civil employes of the Government in the Interior Depart¬ 
ment, you will find every blacksmith, every blacksmith’s apprentice, 
every laborer, every farmer, every workingman of any kind or charac¬ 
ter employed in every Indian agency all over the vast territories of 
this land. He has got every one of these persons included, and then 
the total does not come up to his number. And not onjy that, but in 
some of these Indian agencies, occupying one-third of his whole list 
of the Interior Department, he lias got the Indians themselves in. I 
find such employes of the civil service as Little De Cora, Red Blanket, 
Little Bear, Big Bear, Big Bear’s Brother, Gray Wolf, Yellow Bank, Fish 
Tail, and the like. There is a good part of a column of these Indians 
in the employ of the civil service in some way or other at one agency 
alone, and the gentleman calls them civil employes of the Govern¬ 
ment. Then, in another agency, I find such names as Joe Stine, Stick 
Joe, Jim Swail, Big Tom, and so on. Why, there are Indians running 


11 


all through it. I find no Indians in the Blue Book of 1859. They had 
not civilized the Indians enough then to employ any of them in the civil 
service of the Government, even at the agencies on the remote frontier. 

Mr. ELDREDGE. Why are they put in the Blue Book if they are 
not in the civil employ of the Government ? 

Mr. KELLOGG. I suppose they are employed in some way. “Jim 
Swail” is a herder; “Big Tom” is a farm hand; and “Fish Tail” 
is a policeman at his agency. I see by the book- 

Mr. ELDREDGE. I do not suppose that the compiler of the Blue 
Book was deceiving the country or anybody. 

Mr. KELLOGG. Not at all; but I am showing the character of a 
number of these employes, which makes such an extravagant increase 
of officials the last few years- 

Mr. ELDREDGE. Is not the gentleman accomplishing this show¬ 
ing that there is an unnecessary number employed ? 

Mr. KELLOGG. No, sir. I do not know anything about the neces¬ 
sities of the Indian agencies under these treaties. They were estab¬ 
lished before this Administration. This Administration put its foot on 
every one of the Indian treaties, and refused to ratify them when 
they called for unnecessary expenses; but we are obliged to carry out 
the x^rovisions of these old treaties and employ these men. I x>resume 
there are useless men emxdoyed at many of the agencies; but the law 
is, as the gentleman well knows, that we are obliged to employ such 
men as we have stipulated to emidoy under those old treaties. 

But one word more about the Interior Department. There are some 
institutions which have been established in this District, and the offi¬ 
cers and emx)loy6s of these institutions are included here. For in¬ 
stance, there is the Government Hospital for the Insane in this 
District, and the comxfiler of the Blue Book has put in it every cook, 
and assistant cook, and laundress, and dairy woman, and chambermaid 
emxdoyed in that institution, and you will find their names here. 
Here are some of them: Johanna Fitzgerald, cook ; Mary Anderson, 
chief laundress; Eliza Allen, laundress; Mary O’Day, dairy woman; 
Bridget Davis, table-girl; Eliza Crawford, chambermaid; and so on, 
and a great many of them. They are all included. Here is also the 
Columbia Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, and all its employes 
are included here, which does not appear at all in the Blue Book of 
1859; and its employes are of the same description; and all used to 
swell the list. 

Mr. ELDREDGE. Was it a democrat who got up that Blue Book 
in order to make it appear that too large a number of persons were 
emxdoyed 1 

Mr. KELLOGG. I do not know whether it was a democrat who 
got up the book; and I care not, if he did his work faithfully and 
well; but I am taking the speech of my friend from New York as ho 
made it, comparing the Blue Book of 1873 with the Blue Book of 1859. 

Mr. ELDREDGE. But suxrposing all that is so, because the Blue 
Book of 1859 did not contain the names of all the officers and em- 
X>loy6s, is that any reason why the Blue Book of 1873 should not 
contain them all'? 

Mr. KELLOGG. Not at all. The Blue Book of 1873 is correct, I 
presume; but I am only showing the nature of the work of many of 
the employes who are paraded as a monstrous list of Government offi¬ 
cials. If the gentleman will not interrupt me too much, I will en¬ 
deavor to make no statement but what is true by this book; and I 
will hold myself ready to answer my friend or any other gentleman 
on the opx>osite side in regard to its truth. 


/ 




12 


Now, a word as to the Department of Justice, where the gentleman 
from New York said there was an enormous increase, being from 3U4 
employes in 1871 to 728 in 1873. That was one of the points in the 
table that struck me as astonishing, and I could not understand why 
such an increase should have been made in the Department of Justice. 
But when I turn to the Blue Book I find that of the 728 names about 
300 are Metropolitan police, besides the guards for the jails; and these 
Metropolitan police were not included in the old Blue Book. We 
have taken the District of Columbia under our supervision and gov¬ 
ernment, and we have some 300 Metropolitan police around the city, 
now under the Government instead of under the District as formerly, 
and these have been brought in by the gentleman from New York in 
order to swell the number of civil employ &s of the Department of Justice. 

But perhaps the most startling figures that he gave us the other 
day were those in regard to the Navy Department. He stated the 
increase from 1871 to 1873 to be from 201 in the former year to 8,241 
in the latter year. How that could be in the Navy Department, I 
could not see; but in this case I have taken the Blue Book, from which 
the gentleman spoke, and had the names accurately counted; and I 
find that in the whole Navy Department, including not only the civil- 
service employes, but all the officers of the Navy Department, and 
all the officers in the Navy, from Admiral down to powder-monkey, 
if there is such an officer, including chaplains, boatswains, lieuten¬ 
ants, and midshipmen, and throwing in all the cadets at Annapolis 
besides, there are only 2,349 persons in all the Navy Department, at 
Washington and elsewhere. There are 131 employes in Washington, 
according to the Blue Book, but this includes the naval officers here ; 
and yet the gentleman has sent forth to the country, in his table, that 
in the civil service of the Navy Department, in 1873, there were 8,241 
employes. There were but 132 civil employes in the Navy Depart¬ 
ment, according to the Blue Book, and the gentleman from New York 
made a mistake of 8,110 in the list of the civil employes of the Navy 
Department alone. A small mistake for a reliable table of figures, 
given from the book! 

Now for the War Department. I have had an accurate count made 
of the employes in that Department. The gentleman stated in his 
table that in 1859 the civil-service employes in the War Department 
were 336, and in 1873,1,666. Now, I have had them accurately counted, 
as given in the Blue Book, at Washington and elsewhere, and not 
including the officers of the Army; for I" find they are not included 
in the gentleman’s table, because if they were they would swell the 
amount above 1,666. There are at Washington 478, and 514 elsewhere, 
making 992 in all. You can include West Point cadets and officers 
enough to make it up to 1,666 if you please ; but we are talking about 
the civil employes of the Government. Compare the number of our 
Army in 1859 with the number and extent of the service of the Army 
in 1873 and show me where there is any extravagance in that increase. 

Next comes on my list the State Department. That is one of the 
Departments which the gentleman speaks of as'having naturally had 
a very small increase. He gave the increase as from 373 in 1859 to 
464 in 1873. I have had the names accurately counted in the Blue 
Book in this case also; and I find that in order to make up his num¬ 
ber he has included 91 of these centennial commissioners for which 
our friends from Philadelphia are responsible, and who are in the 
service of the Government without any pay whatever from the Gov¬ 
ernment. 


13 


Mr. KELLEY. And whose traveling expenses and hotel hills are 
paid hy the city of Philadelphia, out of its municipal fund, though 
they represent the United States. 

Mr. KELLOGG. That is true. But those 91 commissioners are 
put in there to swell the number of civil-service employ6s in the 
State Department. I see, also, the seven gentlemen composing the 
civil service reform commission are in there; aud that we all know 
is a new thing since the Blue Book of 1859. 

The gentleman from New York, in the early part of his speech, 
when referring to the table of figures given in some speech or other, 
or in some such connection, if I caught his words right, said that “fig¬ 
ures do lie confoundedly sometimes.” I do not find those words in 
his speech as revised; perhaps the expression was not quite elegant 
enough to suit the gentleman’s taste, in connection with the rest of 
his speech. But I submit to the House whether a better illustration 
was ever given of figures lying than the tables which the gentleman 
from New York was unfortunate enough to have prepared for him; 
for I do not suppose that he intentionally and knowingly had those 
figures so monstrously devoid of truth prepared purposely. 

Mr. ELDREDGE. Docs the gentleman from Connecticut charge 
the gentleman from New York with lying? 

Mr. KELLOGG. Not at all. If the gentleman had paid attention 
to Avhat I have just said he would not have asked such a question. 

Mr. ELDREDGE. But that the tables lief 

Mr. KELLOGG. That is it. The tables lie. I do not claim that 
the gentleman from New York knew what these tables contained. 
Somebody, I do not know who, probably got them up for him. 

Mr. ELDREDGE. If you are only accusing the tables of lying- 

Mr. KELLOGG. That is all. I hope I have too much sense of pro¬ 
priety and too great courtesy to accuse any gentleman on this floor 
of anything of that kind. And that it may be plain that I have not 
misrepresented the gentleman from New York, I will publish right 
here, as a part of my speech, the tables which he gave us, with the 
context in his own language. Here it is : 

I present herewith a series of tables gathered from the Biennial Register or Blue 
Book for the years named, which conclusively prove this. Indeed, a general ex¬ 
travagance and waste pervade each of the Executive Departments. The chair¬ 
man, Mr. Dawes, has referred to some of them, hut only to a few. 1 have followed 
the line of investigation, which he hut began, and present a series of tables, care¬ 
fully gathered from official sources, which show and prove this: 



Statement of the number of employes borne upon the civil list of the United States from 1859 to 1873 inclusive, compiled from the Biennial Register. 


14 




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Legislative 

Total... 






































































15 


The gentleman brings in liis indictment against the republican 
party at the close of his speech. The specifications run almost through 
a whole column of the Record, from first down to fifteenthly, in¬ 
clusive, more heads than there used to be in an old-school sermon 
forty years ago; and it would take more divinity than was ever em¬ 
bodied in one sermon to sanctify such a speech as that. Here is the 
gentleman’s language: 

In conclusion, I present a series of allegations implicating this party. I defy 
contradiction as to the accuracy and truth of every one of them. 

* * * , * * * * 

Fourthly. It lias increased the civil list from 44,500 persons in 1860 to 86,660 per¬ 
sons in 1873. 

But I have not quite done with the gentleman’s figures yet. I will 
now turn to some of these other figures—to the very first table which 
the gentleman gave us, showing a large increase, as he claimed, of 
expenditures, the appropriations for 1873 and 1874, and the recom¬ 
mendations for 1874 and 1875. 

The first item is that for the United States mints and assay offices. 
There is, as he claims, a larger increase in that item, a much larger in¬ 
crease, than in anything else in this table. The others are small. The 
gentleman has placed the amount appropriated for 1873 and 1874 at 
$762,180; and the amount recommended for 1874 and 1875 at $1,026,240. 
Those who have examined the reports know that this work has largely 
increased the past year. No w I find by examination that the gentleman 
from New York was evidently led into an error by this appropriation 
bill. The appropriation bill gives on the last page as the amount ap¬ 
propriated for that purpose $762,180. Now if the gentleman had tested 
liis own figures, and had turned to the estimates, as given on page 26 of 
the Book of Estimates, he would have found that the actual appro¬ 
priations for mints and assay offices last year were $953,472 instead of 
$762,180. Those are the figures given in the Book of Estimates, which 
comes with the voice of authority from the Treasury Department; 
and the person who made up these tables for him—if any one else 
made them up—led him astray by a mistake in the figures which were 
given on the last page of this appropriation bill. 

Mr. GARFIELD. The figures given on the last page of the appro¬ 
priation bill show what was appropriated in that bill only, and not 
in the other appropriation bills for last year. 

Mr. KELLOGG. Certainly; that is the case exactly, and it shows how 
heedlessly the gentleman’s figures have been prepared. But I find upon 
looking at the estimates that one item this year is $145,000 for the mint 
at New Orleans, which is estimated for the coming year, and which 
was not in the appropriation bi ll of last year at all. Besides all that, 
the report of the Director of the Mint shows that down to last April 
a large proportion of the expenses of the Mint was paid out of what 
was called the cent-coinage fund; that more than $100,000 of the 
expenses of the mint at Philadelphia was paid out of that fund. But- 
last year we changed the law, and the gentleman from New York ad¬ 
vocated the change as he says, and voted for it. By that change of 
law, since the 1st of April of last year, this cent-coinage fund is turned 
into the Treasury of the United States, and the whole expenses of the 
Mint and assay offices are paid by appropriations directly out of the 
Treasury. That, I think, is a perfect answer to the gentleman’s fig¬ 
ures upon that point, and it shows a reduction rather than an in¬ 
crease of expenditures, though the work has increased and is rapidly 
increasing. 

I suppose that the gentleman from New York, [Mr. Wood,] In giv- 


16 


ing his statistics and figures, had not digested or examined them 
Thoroughly to know whether they were correct or not. Probably they 
were made up for him by some clerk, or somebody else. But whoever 
did it overshot the mark; he made the charge altogether too heavy. 
The gentleman, in loading his blunderbuss to destroy the republican 
party for their extravagance, (for his speech was a veritable blunder¬ 
buss, so far as his statement of facts and figures was concerned,) 
ought to have remembered the fate of the old poet’s marksman— 

Whose musket, aimed at duck or plover, 

Bore wide, and kicked its owner over. 

Mr. ELDREDGE. I would like to know how it was in regard to 
the figures in New Hampshire—whether they were a “blunderbuss” 
that “kicked its owners over.” [Laughter.] 

Mr. KELLOGG. The figures from New Hampshire are right, of 
course; the smiling face of my friend over therefrom New Hamp¬ 
shire [Mr. Parker] verifies those as right without any more inter¬ 
ference of the gentleman from Wisconsin. But the figures of the 
gentleman from New York were made up for just about that time in 
New Hampshire; and I propose to have some of them corrected be¬ 
fore there is an election in any other Stat e. In my statements I 
have spoken by the book, and if gentlemen will find any mistakes in 
what I have stated, as found in this Blue Book, I will make ample 
retraction on this floor or anywhere else. 

The gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Randall,] who is about 
the only man on that side of the House who has spoken upon the 
merits of the bill, and who treated it in a sensible way, told us some¬ 
thing about what is called the “slu&k-fund” in the Treasury Depart¬ 
ment, and which has been used to pay an additional amount to cer¬ 
tain important officers, so as to make their salaries sufficiently large 
to keep them there. Last year that fund in the Secretary’s office 
was only $22,500, and in the Treasurer’s office $8,500, making $31,000 
in all. 

Mr. ELDREDGE. I wish the gentleman would tell us wliat that 
“slusli-fund” is. The name does not seem to explain it, and a great 
many do not understand what it is. 

Mr. KELLOGG. I will tell the gentleman if lie will keep quiet. 

Mr. ELDREDGE. And then tell us whether that fund is not a 
part of the moneys of the Government. 

Mr. KELLOGG. I will answer the gentleman if he will not inter¬ 
rupt me longer, for he is taking altogether too much of my time. It 
is a fund appropriated in the appropriation bills year after year for 
the purpose of enabling the Secretary and the Treasurer to add cer¬ 
tain sums to the salaries of certain important officers in their Depart¬ 
ments. Last year it was only $31,000, while during Johnson’s adminis¬ 
tration, when McCulloch was Secretary of the Treasury, he had two 
hundred and fifty or three hundred thousand dollars a year for this 
very slush-fund given him by appropriation bills. 

Mr. ELDREDGE. That is back pay, is it not ? 

Mr. KELLOGG. No, sir; it is not backpay; it is addition to the 
regular pay, which was fixed by law when prices were low, long be¬ 
fore the war. I admit it is the wrong way to do it, and we will try 
to make it right by making the salaries what they ought to be by law, 
without these extra additions. It works in this way : The Treasurer 
obtained the services of a cashier, one of the most valuable men in the 
Department. His salary was $2,800 a year by law. A little bank out 
in Omaha offered him $3,800 a year and took him away. When this 


17 


fund was given to the Treasurer he took $1,000 of it and added it to 
the regular salary, making it $3,800 a year, and got the cashier hack 
again. That is the way it has been applied. » We propose to change 
it all, to abolish the whole of this slush-fund, and to pay each man a 
proper salary to he fixed by law. Instead of this slush-fund being 
anything chargeable to this Administration, during the last three or 
four years the Committee on Appropriations have reduced it from 
$300,000 a year down to $31,000. 

Sir, the expenses and increase of force in the Treasury Department 
have not kept pace with the increased amount of labor that the re¬ 
sults of the war and the growth of the country have thrown upon that 
Department. There is a willingness to reduce expenses there as far 
as it can be done safely and with justice to the service. As I said in 
reply to the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Beck] the other day, 
that Department has cut down its number of Bureaus and divisions 
largely since 1868. The Secretary has reduced in his office the num¬ 
ber from twenty-three to twelve, namely: 

The following is a list of the divisions or Bureaus which existed at the close of 
the Johnson administration: Appointment, Civil Warrants, War and Navy War¬ 
rants, Public Debt Statement and Finances, Sub-Treasury, Revenue Marine, In¬ 
ternal Revenue, Stationery, Printing, Libraries, Special Agents, Steamboat Inspec¬ 
tion, Files and Binding, Note, Loan, Miscellaneous, and seven Customs Divisions, 
as follows: Warehouse, Fines and Forfeitures, Rates of Duties, Navigation, and 
three Law Branches. 

Under the reorganization of 1869, these were consolidated, and now exist as fol¬ 
lows: Appointment, Warrant, Independent Treasury, Customs, Revenue Marine, 
Internal Revenue, Navigation, Record and Files, Stationery and Printing, Mail, 
Note, Loans. 

I did not intend, Mr. Speaker, to publish any of these tables, which 
are official, and I will not publish any of them now except one, which 
will show the increase of labor and expenditures as compared with 
the increase of force in the office of the Auditor of the Treasury for 
the Post-Office Department from 1864 to 1873, inclusive. They were 
prepared with care at the Department, and not by myself. Any one 
by examination at the Department can test their accuracy. The, 
table is as follows: 

Comparative statement showing the force employed, the business transacted, 
and the annual rate, of increase in the office of the Auditor of the Treas¬ 
ury for the Post-Office Department from 1864 to 1873, inclusive. 


Years. 

Number of em¬ 
ployes. 

Amount in¬ 
volved in post¬ 
al settlements. 

,1 A A 
"o® 

a ® 

43 a 5s ® 

^ © a ® 

© k * a 

S’© K2 
<1 > 

Rate of increase 
of employes. 

Rate of increase 
of postal busi¬ 
ness. 

Rate of increase 
of money-or- 
1 der business. 

1864. 

135 

#25, 083, 039 98 

Notin operation 




1865 . 

140 

28, 250, 886 98 

29, 739, 065 51 
34, 472, 510 33 

$2, 652, 094 74 

3.7 

12.6 


1866 . 

141 

7, 829, 098 77 


5.3 

195.2 

1867. 

141 

18, 207, 202 43 

...... 

15.9 

132.5 

1868 . 

140 

39, 023,193 45 
42, 042, 642 22 

32,174, 359 58 


13.2 

76.7 

1869. 

165 

49, 295, 435 95 

17.8 

7. 7 

53.2 

1870. 

165 

43, 771, 058 28 

67, 712, 924 98 

. 

4.1 

37.4 

1S71 . 

165 

44, 427,149 50 
48, 573, 618 68 

83, 869, 785 06 


1.5 

23.9 

1872 . 

173 

96; 557, 938 60 

4.8 

9.3 

15.1 

1873. 

198 

52, 081, 687 24 

114, 416, 565 92 

14. 4 

7.2 

18.5 


Total amount of business transacted.#860,180, 257 76 


2 K 


> 

































18 


Per cent. 

Average annual increase of employes. 4. 5 

Average annual increase of postal business. 8.5 

Average annual increase of money-order business. 61. 4 

Average annual increase of entire business. t . 69. 9 

Increase of employes since 1865 .«.. 41 

Increase of postal business since 1865. 85 

Increase of money-order business since 1865. 4, 214. 2 

Number of post-offices in operation July 1, 1864. 19, 976 

Number of post-offices in operation July 1, 1873. 33, 511 

Increase in post-offices since July 1, 1864. 67. 8 


As to the gentleman from Kentucky, [Mr. Beck,] I will omit to say 
some tilings I would have said if he had been here. The gentleman 
from Ohio, chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, has pretty 
well disposed of a large part of his speech. He gave us the same old 
speech that he lias given us for five years in succession, and some¬ 
times two or three times a session, with a few additions; a speech 
reiterating the same charges of extravagance, which he always tells 
us he is going to prove. Why, sir, take this legislative hill, and you 
will find that the only place in which the Committee on Appropria¬ 
tions have not made a large reduction in the expenditures of' the 
Treasury Department is in the Internal Revenue Bureau, which the 
gentleman from Kentucky himself examined, and upon which he 
made a report to the committee. 

One thing I thought he was going to neglect. He began to tell us 
again about the decline in the shipping interest, and he went on in 
the same strain in which he has indulged every year for the last five 
years. But, sir, if he had turned to the finance report, he would have 
found that during the last year the increase in building of the ship¬ 
ping interest has been almost tenfold what it was the year before. 
They are building ships now in Maine; they are building ships on the 
Delaware at Chester; also at Wilmington and other places. During 
the last year the amount of tonnage built has been nearly ten times 
what it was in the previous year. I give him an extract from the 
report of the Secretary of the Treasury, page 23 : 

The increase in ship-building in the country is decided. Official numbers were 
awarded by the Bureau of Statistics to 1,699 vessels of tbe aggregate tonnage of 
313,743 tons, while, during the year preceding, the addition to our mercantile ma¬ 
rine was only 38,621 tons. Since the close of the fiscal year still greater activity 
has prevailed in the ship-yards on the Atlantic sea-board. From the 1st of July to 
the 1st of November documents have been issued to 1,288 completed vessels of 
181,000 tous in all, while such returns as have been received, incomplete as they 
are, indicate that there were building in October last 386 vessels of the tonnage of 
177,529tons; including 69 steamers with a tonnage of 67,007 tons, of which 18 iron 
steamers with an aggregate of 38,492 tons are in course of construction on the Del¬ 
aware. 

The gentleman from Kentucky admits that the tables given in the 
speech of the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Dawes] were, in 
general, right. Sir, that speech, when corrected at the suggestion of 
the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. Garfield,] shows that the expenses 
of the Government have been reduced from $377,000,000 in 1888, to 
$290,000,000 last year, in round numbers. The expenses last year were 
only $290,345,245.33, aside from the sinking fund, as the gentleman 
from Kentucky admits. 












19 


I quote the table of expenditures as given in the speech of the gen¬ 
tleman from Kentucky on page 14 of the Record of March 8: 


Year. 

Expended by ad¬ 
ministration. 

1867. 

$357, 542, 675 16 
377, 340, 284 86 
322, 865, 277 80 
309, 653, 560 75 
292,177,188 25 
277, 517, 962 67 
290, 345, 245 33 

2, 227, 442,194 82 

1868..... 

1869. 

1870. 

1871. 

1872. 

1873. > . 

Totals. 



The river and harbor improvements, and the increase in expendi¬ 
tures on public buildings, will account for a part of the increase over 
1872, in the year 1873. The gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Beck] 
said also that u the Secretary of the Treasury has used a fund of three 
millions a year in organizing Bureaus and chiefs of staff all through 
the Treasury Department,’ 7 referring to the “ slusli-fund,” I suppose, 
which I have already shown is only $31,000, under the present admin¬ 
istration of that Department. And in his second speech, made four 
days after that of the gentleman from New York, when he ought to 
have examined the figures before he indorsed them, he used the fol¬ 
lowing language near the close of his speech : 

The gentleman from New York [Mr. Wood] showed conclusively in one of his 
tables the other day, if anything were needed further to prove what I have stated, 
that all ordinary expenditures are rapidly increasing to an alarming extent. 

If he always indorses pajier so recklessly, he will need something 
more than an increase of salary to honor his indorsements. 

Now, the figures as given in the speech of the gentleman from Mas¬ 
sachusetts, [Mr. Dawes,] and which the gentleman from Kentucky 
admits to be correct, and requotes, prove that the expenses of the 
Government, instead of increasing'have been constantly diminishing 
from year to year down to 1873. We have cut them down something 
like $70,000,000 or $80,000,000 within the last six years; and at the 
same time, as these other tables show, we have reduced the public 
debt nearly $400,000,000, and have cut off about $40,000,000 of annual 
expense in the way of interest, &c. When gentlemen on both sides 
admit these figures, I am not to be frightened from my propriety by 
any charge that the present administration is more extravagant than 
any other. 

f notice that a leading paper of New York City on Monday last, 
following up the speeches of the gentleman from New York and the 
gentleman from Kentucky, gave the following table, among others, 
to show the enormous increase in the expenditures of the Govern¬ 
ment. It is taken from pages 16 and 17 of the tables annexed to the 
last annual report of the Secretary of the Treasury. For simplicity 
round numbers are given for the figures below the hundreds of 
thousands: v 


j'kM ■ V.- 

















liO 


Year. 

Army. 

Navy. 

Pensions. 

Interest. 

1866. 

$283, 200, 000 

$43, 300, 000 

$15, 600, 000 

$133,100, 000 

1867. 

95, 200, 000 

31, 000, 000 

20, 900, 000 

143, 800, 000 

1868. 

123, 200, 000 

25, 800, 000 

23, 800, 000 

140, 400, 000 

1869. 

78, 500, 000 

20, 000, 000 

28, 500, 000 

130, 700, 000 

1870. 

57, 700, 000 

21, 800, 000 

28, 300, 000 

129, 200, 000 

1871. 

35, 800, 000 

19, 400, 000 

34, 400, 000 

125, 600, 000 

1872. 

35, 400, 000 

21, 200, 000 

28, 500, 000 

Ilf 400, 000 

1873. 

46, 300, 000 

23, 500, 000 

29, 400, 000 

104, 800, 000 

1840. . 

7,100, 000 

6,100, 000 

2, 600, 000 

175, 000 

1850. 

9, 700, 000 

7, 900, 000 

1, 900, 000 

3, 800, 000 

1860. 

16, 500, 000 

11, 500, 000 

1,100, 000 

3,100, 000 


Now, sir, it is only necessary to remark, that of course sucli items 
as pensions and the interest on the public debt must have greatly 
increased since the war. 


In my remarks to-day I have spoken, as I have said, by the book— 
the same book which has been referred to by the gentleman from New 
York, and which he held in his hand when speaking; the book from 
which have been taken, as was claimed, the statistics which have 
spread, as my genial friend from New Hampshire [Mr. Parker] is 
aware, all over his State, and which are spreading all over the coun¬ 
try. I have sought to make some corrections in these figures. 

The able speech of the gentleman from Massachusetts, [Mr. Dawes,] 
which has led to these other speeches, has been the means, perhaps, 
of misleading some people in the country as to whether extrava¬ 
gance was on the increase in the Government or not. Several days 
after that speech was made, the New York Tribune—I believe that 
was the paper, the same from which I have quoted the table—said 
that two or three leading men on this side of the House, together 
with my humble self, were preparing to answer it, and were going 
to engage in the work of “stoning a prophet.” Stoning a prophet! 
Why, sir, if the gentleman from Massachusetts himself were here, he 
would say, from what he knows of me, that instead of throwing a 
stone at him, I would throw around him the arms of encircling love. 
I have loved him long; and he knows it. I have admired him from the 
time when, as a boy, I rode over the hills in Western Massachusetts to 
hear him lead off in the lyceuni debates in the village of the county in 
which we lived. Ever since that time I have admired him and his 
speeches. Only, as he grows older, he grows, I think, somewhat despond¬ 
ent ; and is disposed to be frightened as to the future of the country. 
I think this vein of despondency runs through his recent speech. He 
gets tlie blues on about once in two years, when he makes his biennial 
speech. 

The great thing in that speech liable to mislead was his stretching 
a drag-net over all the expenditures of the Government, the neces¬ 
sary and permanent expenditures which have been heaped up by the 
war, and which we in recent years under his administration and under 
other leaders in the House ha ve been steadily reducing. He stretched 
a drag-net over them all. He piled them up like a mountain mass 
before our eyes, and frightened the House and the country by their 
magnitude. 

I will say, however, when that speech is carefully studied, it will 
produce good, in my judgment. It will produce good if it will lead 
us to a judicious economy in all the expenditures authorized by this 
Congress. I agree with every one of his conclusions most heartily, 
that we should not have an increase of the public debt, that we should 
not resort to any forced loans to meet our current expenditures, but that 
































we should cut down our expenditures by a judicious and careful dis¬ 
crimination, so as to bring them within our revenues during the year 
that is to come. 1 believe that he and all of us are now satisfied that 
we can do this. 

I thought at the time the gentleman from Massachusetts rose in his 
place in December last to announce that there was danger of forty 
millions more of taxation, that it was unnecessary to alarm the coun¬ 
try by saying we might have to impose forty millions more of taxes. 
I thought then, also, and think now, that any new loan is unneces¬ 
sary; and that no more taxation is necessary. * The country was, and 
has been, alarmed by it; and it has brought business to a stand-still 
in some parts of the country in the articles that were proposed for 
taxation. No man knew what to do, whether to buy or sell, when 
an uncertainty was hanging over him on this matter of taxation. I 
believe the Record shows that I rose in my place at the time, and 
suggested that there was no need' of sending back the estimates for 
revision ; and the result has proved this to be true. We could have 
cut down the estimates on the public buildings and other matters our¬ 
selves, without alarming the country. And wliat has all this debate 
been about ? Simply upon the two little bills to repeal the taxes on 
matches and bank-checks; bills which the Committee on Ways and 
Means reported unanimously against, and which reports would have 
been accepted without debate if the committee had not put them at 
the head of the Calendar. 

Few of us would have thought of taking oft' those taxes this ses¬ 
sion in the state of the Treasury after the late panic. I trust they will 
both come off the next session. Both these bills were introduced by 
me at the last Congress, as well as by others. I did not introduce 
them this session, in view of the condition of the Treasury. Both of 
these taxes were repealed by both Houses of the last Congress, and 
ought to have staid repealed, instead of some other taxes that were 
taken oft'. Both of them were put back again by three men in each 
House, in a committee of conference, contrary to the recorded will of 
the American people, as expressed by a vote of their representatives 
iii both Houses—a practice that I propose to say something more 
about before the session closes. And yet gentlemen have been mak¬ 
ing their speeches upon these little bills, reported against unanimously, 
for a month—ever since the gentleman from Massachusetts led oft' in 
the debate. 

Why were these bills placed at the head of the Calendar, before the 
forty-four million bill, and before the bills for settling the question 
of the currency? You alarmed the country with the question of 
more taxes, and the business interests of the country have been para¬ 
lyzed all winter with the uncertainty of our action upon the question 
oft the currency. We upon this floor, outside of two or three leading 
committees, have no power over these matters; we cannot say which 
bill shall be reported first, and which shall go to the head of the Cal¬ 
endar, and we are not privileged to report at any time, as they are. I 
believe the country desires action at once upon the question of the 
currency; it wishes to know, at least, whether we will take any action 
upon it, whether we will increase it or leave it as it is. And if we do 
not take action soon, I believe that if we could under the law pass 
appropriation bills for two years within a few days, and adjourn and 
go home, with no power on earth to call us together for two years to 
come, it would be a blessing to the country; for it would leave the 
business men of the country to work out their own salvation, as they 
would know better what to do than now. 

3 K 


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